An 11-year-old girl from Arkansas is back at home after stealing $1,300 from her grandmother and taking a long-distance cab ride to meet a boy in Florida. Catching her wasn't too difficult, though. After her parents reported the girl missing, police found calls to the boy and the taxi company in her cell phone records, and they caught up to the vehicle in Georgia.

Ridesharing service Uber is having a rough time legally these days. The app is blacklisted in India because a driver is accused of raping a female passenger, and now Portland, OR, is putting up its own legal defense against the on-demand taxis to keep them off the city's roads. The business is facing an investigation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as well.

The growing popularity of on-demand taxi services like Uber and Lyft is revolutionizing the way people get around in many cities. Early data is starting to show that in the long term, they could lead to a fundamental change in the whole industry. The first steps of this transformation are already being felt on the streets of New York.

Emissions concerns in London are causing headaches for Nissan, as the company continues its efforts to bring its Black Cab to the city's streets. A proposed ultra-low emissions zone could lead to standards in the city center that are so strict the gas-powered taxi can't meet them, AutoExpress reports.

Some kids ride home from school in a school bus. Others get picked up by their parents or nannies, or by carpool with other parents. Some walk or ride their bikes, or take public transportation. But Baily Deeter of Atherton, CA, simply hits a button on his iPhone and orders a cab from Uber.

Car2go has always been about offering its members an alternative to traditional car ownership as they move around town. Now, the carsharing company's focus is expanding to offer alternatives (plural) with the addition of things like taxis, bikesharing and public transportation to the Car2go family. This is because Car2go and its parent company, Moovel (which is in turn owned by Daimler), have acquired RideScout, an all-in-one service that Car2go calls, "the leading app-based mobility platform in

In London, cab drivers undergo a grueling testing and memorization regime known ominously as "The Knowledge." Obtaining a license to drive one of the British capital's distinctive black cabs is so difficult that students often use motor scooters to get around and learn some 320 routes on 25,000 roads, a process that takes two to four years. They then need to take a completely random oral test, just to make sure they know their way about the city.

Mobile taxi service Uber has exploded in popularity recently, with major investments from Google and even partnering with the latest Transformers movie, but the meteoric rise has been tempered with controversy. In Europe and Asia, the app has sparked protests and has been legislated against to make it harder to use. The company's business practices are now falling under the microscope again, but this time it isn't coming from the old guard rallying against the upstart; instead competing ride on-

Those not-a-taxi ridesharing services are facing all sorts of difficulties, from union challenges to unfriendly local laws. Of course, they're also enjoyed by thousands of people around the world and have support from other union groups, so you're forgiven if you can't keep straight who's in favor of what on the issue. One thing is certain, though, France might soon be a completely anti-ridesharing country.

We've all experienced bad taxis; whether they were smelly or you ended up getting lost. But a group in Washington DC got the worst ride ever on July 8 when the Uber driver they contracted took them on a roughly 10-minute, high-speed chase to evade police.

Uber is really taking it to cabbies in New York City. The car-hailing smartphone app has temporarily cut rates to its lowest-cost UberX service by 20 percent, now making it much more competitive - even cheaper in many cases - to request a ride from the app than to hail a NYC taxi. Also, tip is included in Uber's rate, while yellow cab fares do not include tip. However, Uber's rates vary depending on certain variables such as traffic and demand. Uber has been the target of protests by cabbies in

Some 30,000 taxi drivers across Europe got in their cabs on Wednesday and headed out on the streets, but not to pick up fares: they took to the street in protest. What were they protesting, you ask? Uber.

If you were curious about how taxi drivers around the US feel about the rise of the private ridesharing mob, look no further than The New York Times. The newspaper of record is reporting that American taxi drivers are starting to talk seriously about forming a national taxi driver's union.

As the models continue to grow older, the Ford Crown Victoria is slowly but surely disappearing from US cities as the prevailing taxicab. The same thing is happening in Morocco with its huge fleet of Mercedes-Benz W123-chassis taxis thanks to a little help from the government. The authorities cite safety and environmental reasons for the decades-old sedans to be removed from the road in a cash-for-clunkers-style program slated to start by the end of the year.

Audi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) and General Electric are getting together to study something that won't likely be thrilling for New York City cab drivers. But there are bigger fish to fry and keeping cabbies happy.

Amsterdam's Taxi Electric liked its two-plus years with an all-Nissan Leaf electric vehicle fleet so much that it just got bigger, or at least with its vehicle choice. The company, which says it's the first private-taxi outfit to boast an all-electric fleet, is going to start adding Nissan e-NV200 electric compact vans to its stable of vehicles.